Art Exhibition Sparks Outcry

By Galina Stolyarova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: December 12, 2012 (Issue # 1739)

HUGO GLENDINNING / WHITE CUBE ‘End of Fun’ features provocative imagery relating to religion and politics.

The State Hermitage Museum has come under fire from the State Prosecutor’s office over a controversial exhibition.

Investigators are examining artwork in the exhibition “End of Fun” by British art duo Jake and Dinos Chapman, after the local prosecutor’s office was swamped with dozens of complaints of blasphemy. The authors of the letters accused the works of being “extremist” and “hurting their religious feelings.”

“We have received nearly 130 complaints about this exhibition; naturally, we took the matter seriously,” said Marina Nikolayeva, a spokeswoman for the State Prosecutor’s Office in St. Petersburg. “What people wrote in their complaints — we received most of them through our Internet site — was actually very similar in character.”

The Chapman brothers are no strangers to provocation and controversy. The British artists are internationally renowned for using provocation as a tool to draw attention to social, humanitarian or political issues that they touch upon in their works. In this sense, controversy has become an integral part of their artistic method and strategy.

The exhibition features, among other exhibits, a Christian cross with the figure of McDonald’s clown Ronald McDonald nailed to it, and a crucified teddy bear. These two images featured prominently in the complaints, according to the prosecutors.

Earlier this year, the British duo presented their shocking imagery at an exhibition in Kiev.

The Chapman brothers reacted sarcastically to the investigation, offering “extreme apologies” for their antifascist display. The duo also vowed never to set foot in Russia again.

The Hermitage’s director Mikhail Piotrovsky spoke with open outrage about the prosecutor’s investigation, and branded the complaints “a sign of the cultural degradation of Russian society” and “a parade of snitching,” and suggested the wave of similarly worded letters to the prosecutors could have been “an organized online attack on the museum.”

Piotrovsky expressed hope that the prosecutors would defend the museum’s sovereign right to mount shows of artwork that curators believe are worth exhibiting.

FOR SPT Madonna’s concert also raised hackles.

“It is the competence and the legitimate right of the museum to decide what qualifies as a work of art and what does not,” Piotrovsky wrote in an official statement posted on the Hermitage’s website.

The Hermitage’s director also said that in the current context it would be reasonable to hold an academic conference that would focus on the issues of provocation and blasphemy on the international arts scene.

“To ensure a serious debate on this sensitive and most important issue, we would invite established historians, theologists, arts experts and lawyers, rather than marginals,” he said.

The “End of Fun” exhibition is officially scheduled to run at the Hermitage until Jan. 13.

The scandal over the Chapman brothers’ exhibition is the latest in a recent series of episodes in which Western artists have faced fierce opposition from the more conservative elements of the city’s political establishment and the authorities, particularly over gender issues and human rights.

The Moskovsky district court in November dropped charges against the U.S. pop diva Madonna for “allegedly inciting religious hatred and offending cultural traditions” during her concert in St. Petersburg in August 2012.

The Trade Union of Russian Citizens and several other public organizations had sought 333 million rubles ($11 million) in moral damages from Madonna and the organizers of the concert. During the performance, Madonna reportedly trampled an Orthodox cross under her feet and encouraged the 25,000-strong crowd to wear pink bracelets and raise their hands in order to show their support for gay rights in Russia.

Following in the footsteps of Madonna, fellow U.S. pop icon Lady Gaga, who performed in St. Petersburg on Dec. 9, made statements in support of the gay community in Russia, thereby provoking the local conservative community, including the infamous United Russia deputy Vitaly Milonov.

During the concert, Lady Gaga called for respect for gay rights, infuriating conservative politicians including Milonov, a member of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly and the mastermind of the highly controversial law banning “homosexual propaganda” in the city. Milonov has pledged to contact the prosecutor’s office and ask them to investigate the pop star for breaking this law.